He Doesn’t Care If You Call Him Racist

A reader who comments as “Andrew” left this comment. It describes the way a lot of people I know feel:

As a 46 year old white male, I’d like to give my perspective for the various liberals and leftists who comment here (and I’m truly glad you are here).

By your definition, I’m a racist, and I just don’t care anymore. I don’t believe I’m actually a racist, but you’re going to label me that way anyway, so I’ll just accept it. I’m a racist based on your definition. Fine. I won’t argue, I’ll just acknowledge you are right. I’m guilty of racism. Frankly, I’ve given up trying to prove you’re wrong. Hell, you’ll call me a racist for thinking algebra should be taught in school, and gifted programs should be kept even if they “lack diversity.”

And so now, if I can be so bold, here’s my response: “So what? I get it. I’m a racist. Do you have anything else to say? Now that you’ve defined me as a racist, should I just disappear? Should I just admit that you are right, and come around to your way of thinking? What, exactly, do you want me to do? Because I still think about the issues affecting this country in the exact same way.”

In my work place a few years ago, I was talking to a colleague of mine. Very nice person, intelligent, considerate, and an open liberal. Somehow the topic of immigration came up. I said, very politely, that I believed immigration laws should be enforced. He stood up, veins popping from his neck, and shouted, “You’re a racist!” So that was the end of our conversation.

I’m naming one example out of a thousand. I’ve experienced this time and time again, as have many people I know. (Incidentally, I’m the only non-liberal in my family.) On one issue after another, the response to my opinion is some variation of “You’re a racist!” (Or sexist, or homophobic, or bigoted, or guilty of white privilege – the whole litany.) I get it. My opinions are not to be valued, or even considered. I’m a bad person! If only I were educated (but I am). If only I was enlightened.

Someone above mentioned the Willie Horton ad. Such a racist ad. Here is the name of Willie Horton’s first victim: Joseph Fournier. Mr. Fournier was 17 years old when Horton stabbed him to death. Horton then stuffed Fournier into a trash can, where he bled out from his wounds. After Gov. Dukakis granted Horton a furlough from prison, Horton raped a woman twice, in front of her fiance (who he beat up and knifed). Do liberals care about Mr. Fournier, or his family? Do they care about the woman and her fiance that were traumatized? I don’t see any evidence that they do. You know what they care about? You know what will make them angry? If I use the word “thug” to describe Mr. Horton. Well that’s just not acceptable in polite society. It’s a racist code-word.

My question for all you dear liberals and progressives: Is there a way people like myself can talk about Willie Horton honestly without being accused of racism? Would there have been any way for Bush Sr.’s campaign to discuss the issue of weekend furloughs, and their innocent victims, without being written off as racist? “There goes the GOP again, stirring up white voters.” The Horton ad is considered prima facie evidence that Republicans are racists. But what about Mr. Fournier? How many Democrats know his name?

(A brief aside to my liberal friends. Do you want to reduce white racism? If there’s one issue that perpetuates hostile attitudes of whites towards blacks, it’s black crime. So take that on, why don’t you? But white people only talk about that under the radar, after the equivalent of a secret handshake ensures that they won’t be turned in to the thought police.)

With all of his faults and weaknesses, Trump gave a voice to one group of people who were ignored by both the Democrats and the mainstream press: victims of crime, and their family members. But since the criminals – the murderers and rapists and drug dealers – were illegal immigrants, of course, Trump was racist to do so. And all of us who appreciated him talking about this issue were reacting to “dog whistles.”

Do you want to know why sites like Breitbart are popular? Because they cover stories and issues that the mainstream press won’t touch, or will cover for as brief a period as possible. For example, the woman in Massachusetts who was kidnapped, beaten and gang raped by four Guatemalan illegal immigrants. One of those immigrants had a criminal record, and another had been deported before. Why wasn’t that front page news? What do the Democrats have to say to that woman? Trump at least spoke to the issue. But of course he’s a racist.

Do a Google search for “off duty patrol agent gets killed.” The first two results are from Breitbart, and Fox news. I wish that wasn’t the case, but there you go. The man who was murdered: Javier Vega, Jr. He was a Latino victim, so surely his name will be covered by the press? Killed in front of his wife and children – surely that will be front page news? But no. The two men who killed him were illegal immigrants from Mexico who had been arrested and deported numerous times. So no one knows Vega’s name except “right-wingers” like myself who occasionally read sites like Breitbart.

(But a story like Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown – well that gets non-stop coverage for months. And there are many educated people who still don’t know “hands up don’t shoot” was a complete lie.)

Dear Liberals, Democrats, progressives, leftists: Your use of the word “racist” doesn’t work anymore. We get it. You’re superior. You’re enlightened and we’re not. You care about diversity and we don’t. We only listen to dog whistles. We have given up trying to talk you out of your presumptions, or trying to earn your approval. We no longer consider it worth our while to reassure you that we’re not “that kind” of Republican.

But the fact is, we’re not as stupid as you think we are, and we see right through you. And if there’s one thing Trump has done, he’s given us some backbone to make our voices heard. Of course, that means “expressions of racism” will increase. (OMG!) And every child who behaves like a bully will be blamed on Trump. The fact is, we just won’t care about your freak-outs. Go ahead and caterwaul. You lost, and you deserved to lose.

I cast my vote for Trump reluctantly. Now, I couldn’t be prouder.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: Andrew writes:

I do have an addendum to suggest, if you wouldn’t mind. The sentence in my comment that refers to Gov. Dukakis wasn’t accurate. Another commenter pointed this out on the original thread. Dukakis wasn’t directly responsible for Horton’s furlough. He didn’t make any personal decision. It was the penal administration that granted Horton’s furlough. But as governor, Dukakis vetoed the bill that would have stopped furloughs for first-degree murderers. So the state legislature wanted to make that change, and Dukakis prevented it.

I’m making the correction so that people don’t get sidetracked from the main point because of my inaccuracy.

Done. I would like to add my own thought. I understand where Andrew is coming from in this e-mail, and I highlight it here to point out that a country in which people do not feel shame over racist thoughts, beliefs, and actions is a morally diminished country. I take Andrew’s point to mean that the left has accused him and people like him of racism for so many things, no matter how trivial, that the accusation doesn’t faze him anymore. I have been saying for some time now that if the alt-right grows in power and influence, it will be because ordinary people get tired of being bullied by these kinds of accusations, and choose to ally with people who might actually be bona fide racists, but who aren’t bothered by the attacks from the left.

I think Trump’s not giving a rip about political correctness was a big factor in his rise. If you’ve been reading me all year, you know that I’ve objected to his vulgarity and coarseness on many occasions. Trump lowers our discourse, and normalizes ways of talking in public that ought not be normalized. Having said that, it is undeniably true that the willingness of many on the left to demonize as bigots (racists, sexists, homophobes, Islamophobes, etc.) white people who don’t live up to strict progressive blasphemy codes has called forth contempt for the (necessary and important) taboo against racism itself.

Think of it like this: Prohibition encouraged contempt for the law. If you pass so many “laws” around normal discourse, saying to transgress them makes you an “outlaw” (= bigot), then you should not be surprised when people go full Uncle Chuckie, and cease caring.

This is not a good thing, to culture people into contempt for law! But this is the effect that smug SJW liberalism is having. As the young left-wing writer Emmitt Rensin wrote earlier this year, “The wages of smug is Trump.” I blogged on that Rensin column when it first appeared in Vox back in April, and revisited it tonight after a liberal reader of this blog e-mailed it with his approval. It’s fascinating to read it now. In it, Rensin gives his own side a merciless hiding, saying at one point:

Trump capturing the nomination will not dispel the smug style; if anything, it will redouble it. Faced with the prospect of an election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the smug will reach a fever pitch: six straight months of a sure thing, an opportunity to mock and scoff and ask, How could anybody vote for this guy? until a morning in November when they ask, What the f**k happened?

That morning came a week and a half ago. Here’s more Rensin, from that April piece:

Make no mistake: I am not suggesting that liberals adopt a fuzzy, gentler version of their politics. I am not suggesting they compromise their issues for the sake of playing nice. What I am suggesting is that the battles waged by liberalism have drifted far away from their old egalitarian intentions.

I am suggesting that open disdain for the people they say they want to help has led them to stop helping those people, too.

I am suggesting that in the case of a Kim Davis, liberalism resist the impulse to go beyond the necessary legal fight and explicitly delight in punishing an old foe.

I am suggesting that they instead wonder what it might be like to have little left but one’s values; to wake up one day to find your whole moral order destroyed; to look around and see the representatives of a new order call you a stupid, hypocritical hick without bothering, even, to wonder how your corner of your poor state found itself so alienated from them in the first place. To work with people who do not share their values or their tastes, who do not live where they live or like what they like or know their Good Facts or their jokes.

This is not a call for civility. Manners are not enough. The smug style did not arise by accident, and it cannot be abolished with a little self-reproach. So long as liberals cannot find common cause with the larger section of the American working class, they will search for reasons to justify that failure. They will resent them. They will find, over and over, how easy it is to justify abandoning them further. They will choose the smug style.

Maybe the cycle is too deeply set already. Perhaps the divide, the disdain, the whole crack-up are inevitable. But if liberal good intentions are to make a play for a better future, they cannot merely recognize the ways they’ve come to hate their former allies. They must begin to mend the ways they lost them in the first place.

Reader Andrew, and the place where liberal hectoring and condemnation has driven him to, is exactly what Emmitt Rensin was talking about.

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173 Responses to He Doesn’t Care If You Call Him Racist

The problem is not that folks can’t change their position. As I just pointed out to VikingLS it’s when folks flip 180 degrees from passionate partisans of one position to the other extreme when their tribal candidate wins. In such cases it is reasonable to conclude that triabalism is the most important principle. While in the current case this is direted at some Trump voters, the left does it too. Bill Clinton worshippers being a good example.

I did not vote for Trump, which surely signifies my moral purity. Trump’s election does not show that half the country is “racist”. It does show that half the country thinks that there are more important issues. I agree with that half.

It does not seem to occur to anyone that those reducing every issue to one of “racism” are engaging in political manipulation. Keeping everyone at each others’ throat is a splendid way of distracting attention from other matters that affect us all, while our “betters” go their merry way in pursuing their own agendas.

To me, the significance of Orwell’s “1984”, was in how it demonstrated that debasement of language degrades the ability to think and enables control over mass psychology. I remember when the word “racist” was used to describe the KKK or George Wallace or Orval Faubus. Now the “racist” epithet is the weapon of choice for silencing anybody who disagrees with one’s position on any political matter to which race is even tangentially related.

Thus, in current parlance, even one who opposes discrimination in housing, employment, education, voting rights or law enforcement is nonetheless a “racist” if he opposes illegal immigration, or thinks that a murderer ought to be imprisoned even if he is black.

But, curiously, overt racism as displayed by the ideologically favored (such as Black Lives Matter) is tolerable, and it will never be called “racism”. I see no possibility that this will change, because it is so pleasant to think of oneself as occupying the high moral ground.

The answer, Anand, might very well be a MAJOR disagreement about on which front line American leadership should he focussed.

Let me rephrase that as: Ukraine can simply submit to Moscow, let us focus on sending the very last Islamist to the great hereafter, and let us be crystally clear that total war on Islamism includes anyone who as much as says a prayer for the well-being of the bearded ones.

The problem is not that folks can’t change their position. As I just pointed out to VikingLS it’s when folks flip 180 degrees from passionate partisans of one position to the other extreme when their tribal candidate wins. In such cases it is reasonable to conclude that triabalism is the most important principle. While in the current case this is direted at some Trump voters, the left does it too. Bill Clinton worshippers being a good example.

Oh, no question about that. Politics is mostly about tribalism, and the thing is, highly educated people tend to be more tribal in their political views than less educated ones. It would be great if we all made our decisions about politics based on reasoned considerations of the issues, but unfortunately that isn’t the world we live in.

@ Old West: Yup. I did not expect to have my vote validated so intensely. Watching the various riots and protests, and the double-standard of the media (what happened to “Will Trump supporters accept the election results?!”), made me realize I truly wanted him to win and the other side to lose. Along the lines of, “If this is how you’re going to behave, then to hell with it. Go ahead and keep it up. You haven’t learned a thing, and I’m glad you’re exposing your hypocrisies.”

@ Laurelhurst: No, I don’t want to pick a fight. Rather I often feel a fight is thrust upon me. Reminds me of LOTR: “Open war is upon you, whether you would risk it or not.” I’m not the one pushing my politics on people. I prefer to keep my views discreet except with people I know fairly well. I don’t mind productive and challenging conversations with liberals, but I have found that they … often escalate quickly. I can assure you that I’m not the one interrupting angrily or raising my voice.

@ Eliana: I don’t know. I wish I knew.

@ Noah172: Thank you. I fully agree. I addressed my comment to liberals because of the noise they were making. But you’re right, half the problem is how easily intimidated the Republicans and conservatives can be. That’s why it’s refreshing to believe (or hope) that the bullying tactics don’t work anymore. But I doubt the left, especially the media, will stop trying. “Damn it, we called you a racist. You’re supposed to cower or repent!”

@ Hester: I answered you in an earlier comment already. It happened. My conscience is clear. I am not lying. Friendly banter turned to the subject of immigration, and then my coworker lost it.

@ Zapollo: Well said, and thanks for the link. I’m not nearly so pugnacious in person.

@ Randolph: Well said. “Finished with the games” is exactly what I meant. Not so much angry, just tired and fed up. Note to liberals (say this with your best Jeff Foxworthy accent): If you use “white” as a put-down or a pejorative term, … you just might be a bigot!

@ Philemon: Thank you!

@ RSG: Thanks for the link, but I couldn’t read it because of an ad blocking it. I’ll try to read the print version later. The Atlantic really should do some self-reflecting. The anti-Trump coverage was over the top, although they did make a few attempts to understand potential Trump voters. I read Fallows regularly, and his “Trump timeline” was sometimes valid, but often comical in its overreactions. No, Trump did not tell Russia to commit espionage. Anyway, where was the “Hillary timeline”? Why was she given a free pass? (Ha ha, just kidding, my question was rhetorical.)

@ Andrew: Hello, Andrew. So we meet again.

@ kijunshi:
1) As several commenters have pointed out, “thug” really doesn’t have a racial connotation. Although obviously it’s been appropriated by rappers, etc. I read an article just this week that called Putin a thug. Never knew until now that he was black. My point is that using a word like that and applying it to a black criminal can lead to an accusation of racism which I think is unjustified, and in any case should not be a big deal. My point is that liberals seem to magnify small offenses and ignore the larger ones.

2) I fully agree with you about the need for police reform. I’m an attorney, and well aware of police abuses, including civil forfeiture. I even agreed with much of the DOJ’s Ferguson report (and Conor F’s analysis). I wish conservatives could join liberals in eliminating some of these abuses. Limited government should include alleviating the unjust burdens on people in those communities who basically fund the administrative state. But meanwhile, could officer Darren Wilson be allowed to continue his career somewhere, since he was exonerated? I for one am glad he wasn’t killed by the thug (i.e. violent criminal who had just assaulted a store owner) named Michael Brown.

3) “Or maybe you drive a nice car…” Well, that’s weird. I drive a 2007 Kia Rio, with almost 200,000 miles on it, that I’m still paying off, and I can’t afford a new one. (Off the topic newsflash: A legal career does not always lead to riches.)

@ Darwin’s S-list: Yes, well said. This is really what I meant – “Going forward, I’m not going to embrace racism, but I’m not going to waste one minute of my life trying to deny the charge.” That’s the key. The charge has lost it’s power.

@ albert Salsich: In general I agree that ranting is bad. In this case it was therapeutic. I’ve taken my medication and I’m okay now. Concerning Breitbart, last I checked the case I mentioned (immigrant gang rape) was still valid, but you may be correct. But do you understand that what you wrote about Breitbart is exactly what conservatives believe about the mainstream press, whose megaphone is thousands of times larger than a few right-wing websites? Isn’t “white officer kills unarmed black man” another form of dog whistle? And it leads to officers getting killed.

@ William Nonnemacher: Salon is always good for a laugh. The article you linked to is a form of projection. (Why have so few liberals actually wrestled with the O’Keefe videos or the Wikileaks revelations? Hillary’s campaign was instigating violence and basically running a false flag operation. Where was the violence actually coming from? Who was paying for it?) Conservatives don’t believe Trump should not be criticized, they just want the BS to stop. By the way, Lincoln believed in the Electoral College. It would not have dawned on him to care about the direct popular vote.

In what possible universe is “increase the amount of legal immigration” a good solution to illegal immigration?

There’s no intrinsic moral right to migrate across an international border, and people who are denied such a right- on the grounds of their ethnicity, religion, national origin or anything else- aren’t actually being denied anything they have a moral claim to.

N.B. In the interest of charity I don’t think the United States, at this point in time, should deport the illegal immigrants who are already here, and I don’t think immigration is, right now, one of our most pressing national issues. But I react very negatively to the idea that there is any sort of abstract moral right to migration, and that states are obligated either to let you leave or to take you in, and that resisting mass migration (even on explicitly ethnic grounds) is somehow racist. (Or if it is, that racism is necessarily a bad thing). By that logic, Japan is morally objectionabl for trying to keep themselves Japanese.

@ Michelle:
1) I do get your point. (And by the way, I only mentioned Willie Horton because another commenter brought it up.) But why would Atwater or whoever have to choose a less incendiary example than Brown? What if there was no other criminal that could serve as powerful an example of the foolishness of these furloughs? It seems like you’re suggesting Horton should have been off-limits because he was black.
2) Speaking of incendiary ads, do you remember the NAACP ad that likened George W. Bush to the men who dragged James Byrd to death? Why do Democrats and civil rights organizations get a free pass? We still hear about the Horton ad all these years later, and Republicans are identified with it. But we don’t hear anything about the incendiary ads used against Republicans every election cycle, including the constant refrain of “racism.”
3) I agree that racism is still a problem in this country, and we should find ways to address it. But false accusations (not you, but the kind that I’m referring to) just don’t help. And the definition of “racism” has become so obscure that it’s almost impossible to confront head-on. As others have commented, if I’m a racist solely because I’m white, then what’s the point of having a conversation?
4) If we decide to mutually confront racism, can we acknowledge the racism of black people against white people? Can we talk about black criminals who singled out white victims, like Lashawn Marten, Shawn Tyson, James Edwards, etc? Can we talk about crimes that would lead to non-stop headlines and news coverage if the races were reversed, like the murder of Jessica Chambers, and hundreds like her? Can we talk honestly about black racism against Asians? For example, why so many Koreans were singled out and killed in the Rodney King riots? Racism isn’t just a white or Republican problem. (And this is one reason why “All Lives Matter” is considered such a strong rebuke to BLM, at least by people like me who don’t think white people are the only perpetrators of racism.)
5) “Sites like Brietbart go looking for stories that fit their narrative and feed their readers’ biases.” Yes. But they are up against the entire mainstream monolith of the networks and newspapers that slant everything in the other direction. I have very mixed feelings about Breitbart and similar sites, but they are simply doing up front what the mainstream press does in a more sophisticated and subtle way while pretending to be objective. Look at how the press treated this election – what stories were highlighted and what stories were buried. There’s no comparison.
6) I agree with you that my side of the aisle can also presume too much and kill honest dialogue with phrases like “brainwashed.” For what it’s worth, my apologies, and I truly wish that “the center would hold” and that we could engage in constructive conversations.
7) “Glad you’re proud of your vote Andrew. We’ll see how you feel about it in a couple of years from now.” I expect to still be very happy. At the very least, I doubt we’ll be in a war with Russia. Can’t say the same if Clinton were to have won the election.

It’s very interesting to read this thread…it finds an eerie parallel, to my mind, in reports I’ve read of how radical Islamic radicalization takes place. Not all at once, but by creeping degrees, to the point where a formerly “cultural” Muslim might say, “Because you, the majority culture, believe the worst about me, to hell with moderation. I might as well embody that expectation.”

I’m not saying this to dismiss Andrew’s point of view, merely to note the correspondence.

I wholeheartedly sign off on Emmett Rensin’s analysis, and the “smug style” is a damn shame. Not least because it has resulted in a doubling down on the right, which entails a total refusal to consider the ways in which “racism” might signify a systemic policy, or support for said policy, not just a personal animus. Yes, we’re all mixed bags. Sometimes we end up supporting policies that are unjust, because they’re bundled up with policies we like.

I add my voice to the ever vanishing chorus of the middle, in the time prophesied by Yeats – “things fall apart, the center cannot hold” – and plead to Andrew, and others like him: don’t give in to the fallacy that the proper response is to dig in your heels against a putatively monolithic and totalitarian Left. One strawman does not justify another. All of us who oppose radical jihadism should be able to affirm that.

Brian: Will it help if I change the country of origin to Mexico, and restate my concerns?

Probably not. Allow me to expand on something.

The touching poem set to music by Emma Lazurus creates a false image of the U.S. I hasten to preface my further remarks to say I don’t believe this applies to you personally. I trust your compassion. What I don’t trust is assumptions from that false image.

There have been two immigrant experiences in our history (yes, generalizing perhaps to a fault, please bear with me), and for many immigrants both held true sequentially.

One was the Lazurus effect. They felt welcomed, received immediate assistance to minimize the difficulties of arriving (often with their entire belongings in one piece of baggage) in a strange place with minimal if any language skills.

The other was immediate and sometimes egregious hostility. One can easily read about such groups. Irish Catholics, Asians from various regions, all of them arriving “legally” but entering a world of dangerous proportions. One cannot easily get them discussed in an open way, however.

It should also surprise no one that the latter groups usually established or headed straight for previously established enclaves. The many Chinatowns are normalized sections of their cities, centers of culture and tourism. People who go there to eat and spend their money usually have no idea of why they were established.

The Mexican, Central American and South American groups formed a third group. They resembled many from Europe and Asia only superficially, coming here to seek a living. They were no different from many others in that their earnings were sent back to families in their countries of origin. They were very different because they were deemed illegal.

I won’t argue the legality. The laws and regulations are very clear. I will argue two things.

They were encouraged by employers who saw them as wage slaves from whom they profited in two ways: half or less prevailing wages, no taxes to pay.

They were and are the demons of our age. They have no voice with which to fight back against demonization, and they have no standing amongst the rest of the nation even with some of their own countrymen who were here for generations.

I will acknowledge my very emotional reaction to this entire subject in two ways. As mentioned, my immigrant parents. As not mentioned in this thread but several times on Rod’s threads, I am a direct witness to and target of the scapegoat label and its direct consequences. My Jewish heritage of my mother. My parents heavy Slavic accents during the peak of the Cold War. My being a Pagan in a Christian society. I won’t excuse my venting on you. I will respectfully request your understanding for it.

I will mention one detail: my father sometimes described the intense feeling of irony he felt when people, due to his accent, assumed and vocally stated he was a Communist, when he’d spent his early adult life killing actual Communists in battle, and if the Allies had not conquered Italy (where he was a POW at that point), he’d have been buried without his head after being extradited back to Tito’s Yugoslavia.

@ Charles Cosimano: I love you, Charles. I plan to use your comeback if the opportunity arrives. Another one which I’ve thought about using lately (but haven’t had the chance) is from Braveheart: “Who is this person who speaks to me as though I needed his advice?”

@ Andrew: You again? Get a life.

@ John Burzynski: Yes.

@ Butch: I answered Hester in an earlier comment. The incident I described happened. I didn’t make it up. I was bantering with my coworker while we worked together, the same as we had done numerous times. Immigration came up, and I mentioned my opinion. I didn’t say it aggressively or obnoxiously, just matter of factly. He lost his temper. I was stunned by his reaction, because it was very unlike him.

” Much more likely there’s something generally off-putting about the way this person presents himself to the world, but he’s unwilling to accept that, and so it’s the fault of the liberals.” Could be, but I doubt it. There’s always a chance that I’m blind to what an obnoxious jerk I am. But frankly I’m a very low-key, “go along to get along” type of guy. People have commented on that as a virtue of mine throughout my life. I actually prefer to keep my opinions to myself, at least about controversial issues. Putting it another way, I’m more like Norm Petersen than Cliff Clavin.

In the case I described, it was truly the liberal who acted like a belligerent child. It wasn’t me. Grow up, liberals! 🙂

@ Pastor Brian: Good advice, but I’m not sure how it applies here. Am I what they accuse me of? (A racist.) Maybe by their definition, but I reject their right to define me.

Naturalmom: I sincerely appreciate everything that you wrote. And I agree that I have much to learn from the lived experiences of other people (including African Americans) whose lives are very different from mine. That’s true of everyone. I would love a national dialogue on so many issues, without fear or defensiveness. But when Eric Holder and people like him suggest such a conversation, it’s pretty clear who will do the talking and who will do the listening. I am certain you and I could have a mutually respectful and beneficial conversation. In fact, that’s why I keep coming back to this blog.

@ Wes: Yes, the “secret handshake” felt inspired. Like an initial conversation with someone where you attempt to discern whether the person you’re talking to has their anti-racist antennae up. “So… you think Western civilization by and large has been a good thing?” (Looks over shoulder to see who else might be listening…)

@ Anand: I understand where you’re coming from. I actually think the threat to Constitutional rights comes from the left, not the right. (How many college-age liberals believe in the First Amendment? How many of them agree that controversial speech should be protected? How many of them even understand Amendments 4 through 6? Due process for alleged campus rapists, anyone?) But to answer your main concern, yes, I would certainly have your back. Incidentally, may I suggest that if you are truly worried about government overreach, that you buy a gun? That’s one right that Trump has never stopped defending.

Illegal immigrants are simply not “real Americans.” They’re not. And they shouldn’t have voted in our election. They should be treated with decency and courtesy as they return home. And please do more research into whether birthright citizenship is constitutional – many legal scholars disagree with that interpretation. And enforcing immigration law is actually something that will benefit minorities. People on the left used to understand that. See Barbara Jordan and Cesar Chavez (concerning the latter, Trump at least has not called for vigilante squads!).

@ Hosanna: First, I love your name. “Hosanna” to you as well. You’re right that it’s possible to go too far in the other direction. As I’ve said earlier, it’s not that I think racism isn’t real, or that it’s not destructive, or that I’m not capable of it. I also, by the way, believe that it’s part of human nature and not an American problem. It’s just that the constant, non-stop accusations get tiresome, whether from personal acquaintances and family members, or from the regular news media.

As I said about Breitbart earlier, I’m well-aware of it’s dangers. But “half-truths and blatant falsehoods” are equally the province of CNN, NPR, the NYT, etc. They are just more sophisticated and respected, but they lie constantly. Here’s an obvious example: “hands up, don’t shoot.” That was a lie from the very beginning. People are dead because of that lie. Another example: the Orlando shooting. Somehow that became an example of Republican racism, even though the perpetrator was a Hillary supporter. And if I agree with Trump that perhaps a moratorium on Muslims coming into this country may be justified, so that gay people can be safer and Orlando doesn’t happen again, I will be instantly accused of racism and Islamophobia, while still somehow being anti-gay. I don’t really quite get it.

I wish that I didn’t have to read sites like Breitbart to find stories and opinions that I can relate to. Same with listening to talk radio, by the way. But sometimes those are the only places where I realize I’m not going insane. I agree that there is often genuinely racist sentiment there, and when I read the comments I get disturbed at how quickly it descends into actual racism, anti-Semitism, etc. I’m not insensitive to that. I don’t want to be molded into that kind of image.

And yet, please tell me, what should I read instead to balance the mainstream press? If you go to Breitbart right now, you will see stories that I sincerely believe should be national stories. I believe these stories deserve the attention of the regular national news media. But I can’t find them there. (I named one example in my original comment – the murder of a Hispanic off-duty border patrol agent.) Here’s another example: stories about the Mexican drug cartels and how they influence immigration. And often if those stories do somehow get attention from the mainstream press, the narrative gets slanted into a leftist opinion piece that ignores the substance of what is being covered. Does that make sense? I can’t articulate it very well. But when I read alternative news sites (usually on the right, but not always), I feel like I’m breathing in fresh air.

Case in point: I don’t believe diversity is always a strength. Sometimes I think it does more harm than good. You know who also believes that? Robert Putnam. And credit where it’s due, there was coverage of his ideas in the regular news media. But Putnam was saying what people on the right have been trying to say for years. Guess what the response has been if we say that diversity can actually be harmful to society?

I’m at a real disadvantage. I actually don’t care about diversity. I’m not against it, but I’m not in favor it either. If there’s a room filled with 100 white people, I don’t see it as a problem that needs to be solved. Same with any other race. I have “Hispanics” in my family (I won’t name their country of origin to avoid identifying myself too much). Do you know what they think about how white people talk about them in terms of diversity? As if Cubans and Mexicans and Puerto Ricans and Columbians are somehow one monolithic block? They find it completely unrealistic and condescending.

Similarly, I once belonged to a church that was 1/3 Asian, at least in my city. Do you think that a room full of Asians lacks diversity? Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Malaysians, Indonesians, Filipinos, Indians, and Pakistanis are all the same race? They deserve the one label of “Asian”? Really? That’s news to them.

Why I am rambling on about this? Because everywhere I turn, “diversity is our strength,” and that means a guilty white liberal’s version of the word. The so-called Alt-right sites don’t play the same game. If I were to say “diversity – eh, who cares, it’s overrated,” how would liberals respond? If a 100% Polish or Italian neighborhood becomes more diverse, and then crime goes up, and drugs are sold on the street corners for the first time, and kids start getting beat up at school, how is that beneficial? If you think that hasn’t happened, do some online searching. So I reject that narrative, and I find one that I believe is more according to reality.

I agree (getting back to your comment) that we should not return evil for evil. But I believe we can expose evil, even if others are calling it “good.” I believe the impact of illegal immigration on our country is literally evil. I don’t mean the immigrants are evil – I think the vast majority of them are not. But lawlessness is evil, and violent crime is evil, and perpetuating unemployment is evil (in its impact, such as drug addictions), and voter fraud is evil. Etc. So good for Trump for taking that evil on, and enduring all the abuse that was thrown at him.

Concerning the Benedict Option, I agree. I also believe that Trump won’t come after BenOp communities. I am certain that Hillary’s administration would have.

@ Al Bundy: Thank you.

@ VikingLS: Agreed. Liberals can do no wrong.

@ Siarlys Jenkins: I’ve observed that too. “You’re raciss!” as an ironic joke. Also, I completely forgot that Al Gore was the one who made Horton an issue. (That racist bastard!) Thanks for the memories.

@ Anand: What I liked about Trump was that he was not a typical Republican. My own views are a mishmash of conservative, libertarian, and maybe 10% liberalism so that I remain a decent fellow. If the only thing Trump does is build a wall and enforce immigration law, that’s good enough for me. (I think the Democrats still don’t realize how significant the immigration issue was.) Also, Trump was a Hail Mary pass to keep Hillary away from the Oval Office. Mission accomplished! Hallelujah! Really, I mean that.

It would take too long to go into detail about the other issues that endeared me to Trump. I will say that nevertheless I do have misgivings about his temperament and character, and disagree with him on some issues as well. But I’m glad he’s president. Maybe I’ll regret it, as some here are expecting. Maybe the world will end, before the damn wall even gets built.

Your quote about classism – “Yes I recognize that racism is a problem- but so is classism. And the Democratic party’s classism actually makes things worse for poor and working class whites *and* blacks.” – that describes my sentiments exactly. You guys should have gone with Bernie.

@ Athanasius: Great link.

@ VikingLS: Agreed. “Thug” is a neutral term. But beware, it’s also a dog whistle. Listen, can you hear…

A little late to the party, but, I have developed a fairly thick skin when it comes to racism. I won’t go into my full political biography here, but I was an “Obamacon” which is how I found this website (and I still think that in 2008 candidate Obama was the correct choice). However, since Obama’s election I’ve been called a racist on more than one occasion. This, despite having many Latino and Asian friends (including almost marrying a Latina) and belonging to a very ethnically diverse Catholic parish. This has pushed me much more to the Right and made me much, much more skeptical of immigration and affirmative action, especially the combination of the two (Jim Webb had a decent WSJ editorial about this a few years back).

As the OP says—want immigration law enforced? Racist. Less immigration? You don’t want brown people here—Racist. Less free trade? You don’t want brown people to make money—Racist. Less foreign wars? Oh, you don’t wan’t brown people to be free—Racist. You voted Republican, you must be a neo-Confederate racist. You think we should all speak English. Well, English was invented by white people so, you must be racist. Oh, and Latin and Ancient Greek are racist too. I could go on and on.

This is why I asked that question on the Ben Op thread about race and culture. Does wanting a Classical Christian education make me a “white supremacist”? I’ll let others be the judge of that.

As far as the crime stuff goes, that is a big factor in attitudes that probably DO come a little bit closer to what we could all agree are racist ideas. I’ve only been assaulted once, and it was, sadly, by black teenagers in hoodies (although they were the ones who left with a black eye, not me). As a physician, I’ve lived in a quite a few old neighborhoods in decaying industrial cities. I was almost certainly targeted for crime because of my race (and I’ve had Asian colleagues targeted as well). Just a few weeks ago a visibly pregnant physician was assaulted near the Famous Academic Hospital where I work. This happened in the mid-afternoon, which resulted in her getting a concussion. I only know this because she happens to be one of my wife’s friends. The hospital sent out no email, as they did with Trump’s election, letting people know that this has happened. The hospital has ignored repeated requests for more security, yet they had the nerve to talk about people feeling unsafe because of Trump? Um, yeah, sure.

I’d also Andrew’s statement about the heterogeneity of Latinos. Something I learned at my Fancy Liberal Arts college, is the way that Race is a Construciton. There is a lot to that idea, some true, some false, but no identity has been more constructed for political purposes than that of Latino. The idea that any place has increased their diversity by including blond haired blue eyed Argentines or the children wealthy Mexican industrialists is laugable.

A lot of what passes for alt-right these days is stuff that was mainstream 20 years ago–see Pete Wilson or the NR story “Time to Rethink Immigration”, but the easiest way to find it is from VDARE, which does trade in really racist ideas. Again, when only racists can talk about these ideas, then only racists will talk about them.

[NFR: Well said. I remember what a shock it was to me when, at some point not long after graduating college, I moved into a neighborhood that had an abnormal amount of street crime, all of it committed by young black men from the nearby neighborhood. I was pretty liberal then, and I finally had to admit to myself that a white racist with the attitudes I had encountered growing up in the country would be better prepared to spot a crime threat and protect himself from it than a person like me, who was so on guard against racial prejudice that I had trained myself not to be judgmental when certain facts arrayed themselves in front of me. That was a blow. That truth does not justify racism, certainly; in other settings, white racism blinded those who live by it to certain realities. But I had to admit that in the reality in which I was living, my race liberalism made me more vulnerable to crime. Think of a black man in the 1960s (or later), wandering into a certain white neighborhood. He would be just and decent if he held to the belief that all men should be judged by their actions, and not have the worst assumed about them because of the color of their skin. But if he was thoroughly consistent with that principle, he might wander into a neighborhood where white racists would have beaten him for being a black man transgressing on their turf. His high-mindedness would have blinded him to ugly realities all around him. — RD]

Rod says
[NFR: This is where the Law of Merited Impossibility comes from. The liberal first says “It will never happen, because we’re not the kind of people who do those things.” And when it does happen, the liberal says, “Well, you had it coming, being a bigot and all.” — RD]

Will it also be the law of merited impossibility when Muslims are put on a registry?

The reason liberals pointed to the Willie Horton ad as racist was because it was brought up specifically to put a black face on violent crime to be used as a political weapon, as if violent crime is not also enacted by whites (and when it comes to violence against whites, whites commit those crimes in much higher numbers against themselves than blacks do against whites). And while the crimes committed by Horton were horrific and tragic for the victims, they were “one offs” in a larger scheme of crime data, as are the other reports of violence committed by illegal immigrants against citizens. Crimes occur around the US on a daily basis, very few make the national news, and when they do it is usually because of an extreme or more extant circumstance, not because the news media is intentionally suppressing incidents of minority against white crime. And the tendency of right wing media to conflate an isolated incident of this type as being indicative of larger patterns of minority-white violence, despite actual statistics, is what leads to charges of racism. How does conservative media treat horrific incidents such as the Connecticut home invasion murders a few years ago where two white felons broke into a home, took a white family as hostage, repeatedly raped and tortured the wife and daughters in front of the husband, forced them to withdraw money and then set the entire family and home and fire after beating them to death? Is that taken as a trend of violent white men that the “white community” must address and account for as a whole? If not, then I fail to see why other isolated incidents of minority committed crimes deserve examination under a different lens that wants to condemn an entire population for those crimes, or at least allude to trends within that population that don’t exist, statistically speaking.

I don’t disagree on the other hand that some of the more orthodox adherents of political correctness have perhaps abused the term “racist” to shout down opposing POV, and has perhaps poisoned the well. But the “who me?” protest doth protest too much. Breitbart is not “reporting” on those incidents to provide some sort of balance to national reporting but to create a sense that White America is under siege by minorities and sorry, yes, that is racist, when it does not comport to facts.

There is additionally another aspect of racial “defensiveness” – see I won’t call it “racism” – when it comes to discussing issues particular to the black community, that seems to prevent many whites from having an ounce of empathy and instead seems to incite the opposite. You may think the Trayvon and Micheal Brown killings were “overblown” or distortions but ask yourself this: there have been at least 2 recent killings of police officers committed by white individuals, in which both individuals were somehow managed to be apprehended and will be facing their court dates alive, whereas for many unarmed black individuals who were decidedly not armed and not lethal threats the outcome was different. It is possible to “support the police” while at the same time engaging in some empathy for the victims of these killings without having to leap into the blaming mode of trying to prove the victims were “thugs” and deserving of their deaths. The similarly vapid “All lives matter” slogan is a dodge to avoid these discussions, as it dismisses the purpose of BLM – BLM is not a generic “celebration of blackness” or “black supremacy” movement at the exclusion of all others, it’s better understood as a movement stating “Black lives matter *too*”.

Yes, “liberals” and minority advocates may need to tone down some knee jerk rhetoric but it also needs to come from the other side as well. If you have never brought yourself to find sympathy with a black victim of police shooting, no matter how unjustly it occurred, then perhaps a bit of self-introspection is in order. And if you only get worked up about crimes when they are committed by minorities against whites, and not when whites victimize other whites, or when whites victimize minorities, same there. And yes – activist movements need to also veer away from de-humanizing police and perhaps directing some actions to improve inter-community issues as well, for the record – but of course state sanctioned violence by state employees against private citizens is of course a much different political issue than violence enacted between private citizens against each other.

The reason liberals pointed to the Willie Horton ad as racist was because it was brought up specifically to put a black face on violent crime to be used as a political weapon…

Actually, it was brought up specifically as a straw in the wind that allowed Al Gore to cut to the right of Michael Dukakis, in a vain effort to secure the Democratic nomination for himself in 1988.

Perhaps we should have a law that nobody who sought their party’s nomination and lost may ever run for president again. One strike and you’re out. That would have saved us Al Gore, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, oh yes, and Ronald Reagan. Oh, and Donald Trump of course.

Actually Gore did not use Willie Horton by name or image. He did attack Dukakis from the right on the furlough program in general. It was Lee Atwater that seized on that moment and specifically used Willie Horton as the “face” of the program.

From the article:
“The Massachusetts furlough problem had already been in the news for months when Dukakis and Al Gore sparred in a Democratic primary debate in April 1988. “If you were elected President, would you advocate a similar program for federal penitentiaries?” Gore asked—“to hoots and laughter from the audience,” The Los Angeles Times reported. Gore didn’t mention Horton by name, but it didn’t take long for Bush’s political strategist Lee Atwater and his team of opposition researchers to see a golden opportunity.

Atwater was a master of the Machiavellian campaign. “By the time we’re finished, they’re going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’s running mate,” he famously said. Horton’s mug shot hung on the wall at Bush campaign headquarters.

“The Horton case is one of those gut issues that are value issues, particularly in the South,” Atwater told Baltimore Sun columnist Roger Simon during the campaign. “And if we hammer at these over and over, we are going to win.””

So, I guess, you could technically say that Gore introduced the attack but not on the use of a black face/criminal on the issue, and the rest of the history is there particularly given Atwaters already notorious use of racial issues to scoop white votes. And we are still talking about just the Horton incident. As the original poster “Andrew” has stated himself Breitbart and other conservative media sources routinely “report” on minority-white crimes with the intention of creating a sense of racial panic – that minority criminals are purposefully seeking out white victims to harm. Another thing to consider, when identifying any type of incident involving violent intra-racial crime is whether or not the crime itself was actually racially motivated – as in did the perpetrator specifically seek out white victims like Dylan Roof purposefully sought out black victims, or if the victims and perpetrators were, as much more common, “known” to each other from prior associations or “crimes of opportunity” in which one victim is interchangeable with another. I guarantee that a lot of what Breitbart is “reporting” falls into the latter two categories and were not racially motivated crimes, which of course, makes all the difference in how the crimes themselves should be interpreted.